1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a bundle of electrospun yarn.
2. Description of Related Art
Electrospun fibers and related fiber webs are serving mostly as carriers of drugs, dispersion media of different additives (nanodots, antimicrobial particles etc) and the like. For certain applications, it is of interest and important to electrospin alternative structures instead of the non-woven mats that are commonly formed from an electro-spinning (ES) process. The nanofibers can be applied as filter material, biomedical elements, tissue scaffolds, biosensors, photoelectric components, reinforced composite materials, etc. Nanofibers can be manufactured by a conventional electrospinning method. Nanofibers have a high ratio of surface area to volume and is able to be applied on chemical sensors or biological sensors with a fast response time, good sensitivity and selectivity. Therefore, the electrospinning method is concerned and is rapidly developed.
For certain applications, it is of interest and important to electrospun alternative structures instead of the non-woven mats that are commonly formed from an ES process. Alignment of fibers is important for enabling the twisting of aligned fiber bundles in achieving the ultimate formation of continuous nanofiber and yarns. Several techniques have been developed to control the deposition of the electrospun nanofibers and to obtain continuous alignment by manipulating of the electric field, by changing the static collection geometry and by devising several collection mechanisms.
However, the conventional electrospinning method is limited by the drawbacks of process. Nanofibers are mostly applied to a filtration membrane as a non-woven mesh. Individualizing and assembling these aligned nanofibers and spinning them into a yarn is still an area under investigation in nanofabrication and engineering. Less work is devoted to exploit their inherent structure and properties.